The re-analysis of classical ethnography has become an anthropological industry Since segmentary lineage models enshrined so many of the assumptions integral to what we have learned to call the structural-functional paradigm, they have been subjected to trial by this form of interrogation particularly often. Africanists will be aware that the statuses of Evans-Pritchard's model of Nuer social organization and of Fortes's of Tallensi remain controversial within anthropological circles long after their publication. Another of the classical analyses of a segmentary lineage organization, that made by Laura and Paul Bohannan of the Tiv, seems to have escaped the same degree of controversy. The reason is not without interest: the Bohannans' analyses have been ensured relative immunity from criticism by the general acceptance that their model of Tiv social organization so evidently corresponds to some of the ways in which indigenous Tiv social theorizing represents Tiv society. In other words, and quite explicitly, the Bohannans' analytic model is also a Tiv folk model.

The study of social, economic and political networks provides a new perspective on the history of northwestern Sierra Leone and neighbouring parts of Guinea during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article concerns the men and women of wealth, rank and power who built and maintained local and extensive networks focused on towns in northwestern Sierra Leone, Port Loko and Kambia, at two time periods, c. 1800 and c. 1865. These activities involved the production and exchange of resources; the migration, settlement and intermarriage of families; and the creation, expansion and fission of households, alliances and other groups. Network analysis illuminates major historical changes, such as the development of towns, kingdoms and interregional trade systems. Furthermore, it reveals the shifting nature of ethnic identities, particularly among the Mande. And finally, it helps to show how society in the northwest became more class differentiated as internal and external commerce expanded.

It is perhaps surprising that the recent resurgence of interest in the application of Marxist theory to the study of the historically non-capitalist societies of the Third World should have focused, at least in part, upon the stateless societies of Africa. To some extent, this interest in some of the least differentiated and least class-stratified of societies can be related to the fundamental problematic of Marxist sociology: the characterization of the stage of advanced communism, which remains so obscure in Marx's own theoretical work. An understanding of the dynamics of ‘primitive’ communism might be seen, therefore, as an essential precursor to this underlying concern. Certainly, the often highly tendentious views of Marxist writers on such issues as the definition of the state and the extent of exploitation in the primitive communist mode can be related to this need. However, the rise of Marxist anthropology has not only been presented as a problem of general evolutionary theory. Other influences have been offered to account for the new concern, the most widely cited being the supposed crisis of functionalism, and the resulting necessity for a complete reorientation of the whole discipline of anthropology. Stateless societies, having long occupied a central place in the field of anthropological enquiry, and yet outwardly presenting such simplicity of form, offer a particular challenge to the radical, and in several recent works have been interpreted in what is claimed to be a novel and distinctive way.

Colonial rule brought about significant changes in the regional economies of West Africa, which had already been influenced by Europeans through the slave trade and the succeeding period of legitimate trade. Colonial administration extended the cultivation of export crops, introduced new systems of taxation and currencies, reorientated trading networks, and introduced policies aimed at ending domestic slavery. Levels of population mobility also increased, especially in the agricultural sector, as the seasonal redistribution of labour became an integral part of the production of export crops. This paper looks at the origins and development of dry season labour migration from Sokoto in north-western Nigeria, a migratory system which is generally accepted as being a product of colonialism. The argument takes the opening years of colonial rule in Sokoto and tries to uncover the nature and type of migration which obtained at this time. It is suggested that early migration was influenced by the economy of the central Sudan of the late nineteenth century, and there was an overlap, rather than a sharp break, between pre-colonial and colonial economies. The likely influence of pre-colonial structures is especially pertinent in an area which was the centre of the Sokoto caliphate, the largest and most populous state in nineteenth-century West Africa. But, in the early 1930s, dry season migration changed as the volume of migrants increased and their destination altered; it is the identification of this point of change which distinguishes the early period of migration and the changing impact of colonial policies.

In his recent review article (Sharpe, 1983) Barrie Sharpe submits two of my books (Muller, 1976, 1981) to dissection but he does so in such a carefree manner, with so many mistakes and gratuituous assumptions, that I am prompted to reply in order to set the record straight.

I am first accused of not having dealt with ’religious conversion, social change and economy in [my] two books’. This is partly true for Du bon usage, and I have explained the reasons for not analysing the matrimonial changes brought about by British colonization (p. 28). It would have made too cumbersome a book and would have been beside the point. As for Parenté et manage, I have dealt with ‘economy, social change and conversion’ (pp. 46–67 for economy; 99–100 on the changes in bridewealth payments for literate people; 138–40 about the introduction of reimbursement of bridewealth, for instance, but there are many more changes examined together with the influence of Christianity on marriage throughout the book). These aspects are also covered in three articles published separately: one on inter-tribal trade, another on conversion, and a third on economic change and tin mining, a topic also dealt with in the review article in question (Muller, 1972, 1974, 1980a).

The causes of migration are a major theoretical issue in migration studies. Some writers, such as Udo, see migration as involving a permanent or semi-permanent change of residence. It is usually considered to be a rational, that is an economic, man's reaction to economic differentials between regions (Udo, 1978: 124). Hill adds that in rural West Africa the propensity to migrate does not necessarily correlate at all closely with population density as demographers and economists so often assume; it may be the result of lack of lucrative non-farming occupations, because farming is not regarded as ‘work’ by some West Africans (Hill, 1978: 25–6).

In the late nineteenth century, Catholic missionaries among Tabwa southwest of Lake Tanganyika (now Zaire) sought to create a cohesive community of African Christians. The priests prohibited communal practice of Tabwa religion in the vicinity of their churches (established at points of densest population) and appropriated important means of food production like river-fishing grounds, for their own exploitation or to reward those loyal to them. As they enhanced their own economic and political influence, they contributed to Tabwa anomie, rather than community.

On 29 March 1978 the Federal Military Government of Nigeria promulgated the Land Use Decree, which, with immediate effect, vested all land in the territory of each state of the Federation in the Governor of that state. The land was to be ‘held in trust and administered for the use and common benefit of all Nigerians’ in accordance with the provisions of the Decree. This paper considers the origins and effects of this policy of land nationalization.

On his way back from his first travels to the interior of the Gambia, Mungo Park describes a ‘schoolmaster’ who entertained him in the Mandingo country while his principal host was on a slave purchasing expedition. The school of this master consisted of seventeen boys who ‘always had their lessons by the light of a large fire before daybreak and again late in the evening’ and who ‘were employed in planting corn, bringing firewood, and in other servile offices, through the day’ (Park, 1799: 313–14). Such rural institutions combining elementary Islamic education and farm production must then have existed in the coastal areas of West Africa for at least two centuries, and spread to other parts of Africa as a result of Islamic expansion. They were agents of proselytization and further Islamization. Consequently Quranic schools are often discussed primarily in their relation to Islamic history. In the present day, however, they continue in some areas as viable alternatives to western-style schools and as units of agricultural production. This paper, which stems from research I conducted in the southern part of central Upper Volta on household farms and wealth stratification, underscores the dual function of these farm schools.

There is a general recognition, supported to a large extent by research findings, that in most of the Western industrialized world, women's participation in the salaried work force has a depressing effect on fertility (Kupinsky, 1977; Stycos and Weller, 1967). But research findings on this topic in the less developed world have been largely inconsistent. While a number of these studies find the fertility of women who work for wages to be lower than that of other women (Miro and Rath, 1965; Jaffe and Azumi, 1960; World Fertility Survey, 1980; and Lightbourne et al., 1982), the findings of other studies suggest very little or no differences in the fertility of wage working and nonwage working women (Stycos, 1965; Stycos and Weller, 1965; Okediji, 1976; and Mott, 1974). Furthermore, the findings of other studies suggest that it may not be the assumed role incompatibility between wage employment and familial role per se that leads to reductions in fertility, but rather the degree of approval/disapproval of domestic roles for women (Hass, 1972), normative conflicts (Mason and Pelan, 1981), or the degree of work commitment (Safilios-Rothschild, 1972).

There are many variables which affect nutritional status (Bennett and Stanfield, 1972: 7–8). A number of recent nutritional surveys have tried to assess the influence of polygyny on the incidence of malnutrition, though to date no clear relationship has been found between the two. This may partly reflect a methodological problem: accurate determination of a woman's marital status is not easily achieved by questionnaire, and this is especially true in view of the developmental instability of polygynous households (Muhsam, 1956: 16). Yet questionnaires are frequently used in nutrition surveys and they can generate large quantities of data, although Johnston et al. have urged that studies be simplified in the interests of discovering some underlying structure (1980: 292). As a result of the massive bulk of disparate data, multivariate analysis has come to the fore in an attempt to establish significant correlations among the many variables which can be associated with malnutrition. But, as McDowell and Hoorweg point out (1975: 98), this method requires that an adequate research design be employed: it is not good enough to collect the data first and to seek the associations afterwards. The data to be collected must be carefully chosen so that pre-selected hypotheses can be tested. An anthropological perspective is very important in determining this choice of data. For example, although the term ‘polygynous’ describes a woman's marital status, it gives no indication of her position in a household relative to at least one other wife. For this reason it would be preferable to make the polygynous household, rather than the individual woman, the unit of study. Specific information could then be collected to clarify if there are constraints or advantages experienced by different wives within a polygynous household, or between wives in polygynous and monogamous households, in order to see whether these influence the nutritional status of their children.

In a recent paper on ‘The state and social processes in Africa’, Lonsdale (1981) convincingly demonstrates the poverty of assuming that any one ‘grand theory’ is able to explain the complex relations among state, social process and class struggle and other equally complex social phenomena. Images of the state as parasitic (as in formulations of the ‘Asiatic mode of production’), as an epiphenomenon of property relations or as a neutral mediator, individually fail to grasp the complexity of states' organization and action (Jessop, 1977), yet each clearly evokes an important dimension of that complexity. The fact of political and economic domination has to be dealt with but equally the often contradictory quality of state power reflects the fact that the mediating institutions and ideologies between dominating and dominated are the objects and arenas for competition and struggle among different social groups and categories. The recognition that one has to deal analytically not with a monolithic entity but a set of institutions that are subject to being ‘redefined, added to and patched’ (Lonsdale, 1981: 2) is important. The challenge, then, is to devise analytical means that capture such processes and allow us to unravel the dynamic of contradictions rather than merely note their pervasive character.

This paper explores the nature of ethnic identity in the small town of Guider in northern Cameroon. It focuses on the process of ethnic identity change, specifically upon the incorporation into the Fulbe (sing. Pullo) ethnic group of individuals who originate outside it. Ethnic group change of this kind is not unknown in Africa (see Little, 1951; Richards, 1954; Banton, 1957; Wallerstein, 1960; Burnham, 1972; Salamone, 1975; Nicolas, 1975; Vaughan, 1981). The data in this study contribute to a growing body of literature concerned with ethnic boundary crossing, but, I shall argue, they suggest that we re-examine certain widely held assumptions about ethnicity and the process of ethnic assimilation.

Two contrasted viewpoints are adopted by scholars towards indigenous credit institutions in underdeveloped societies. The first holds that such institutions cannot play any significant role in capital formation in those societies. Thus Firth (1964: 15–34) doubts ‘if such credit associations can contribute substantially to capital formation to promote economic growth significantly’. The second viewpoint is held by those who accept the important contributions of these institutions in the process of development but understate their functions and value in the process of development. Geertz (1962: 241–63) belongs to this group. After analysing indigenous credit institutions in Asia and Africa, he asserts that they can serve as a kind of ‘middle rung’ in economic development. He sees them as an ‘educational mechanism in terms of which peasants learn to be traders not merely in the narrow occupational sense, but in the broad cultural sense’. These conclusions seem to have influenced other scholars studying credit institutions in Africa. For instance, in his study of credit associations among the Afikpo Igbo, S. Ottenberg (1968: 237–52) adopts much of Geertz's stance.

Where peasant production predominates in the national economy, the state is faced with a difficult dilemma. It must derive its revenues from cash crops, but if it appropriates too much, it will drive peasants out of the cash market and into subsistence (Hyden, 1980; Bunker, 1983b). Many African states have attempted to resolve this dilemma through direct contrôl of crop markets (Bates, 1981). Market control in peasant economies, however, usually offers the major means of wealth and upward mobility at the local level, so different power groups there may challenge the state's hegemony (Saul, 1969; Hyden, 1970). I have already shown how such groups achieved significant control of markets in Bugisu, Uganda (Bunker, 1983a), and how the state responded with periodic interventions to limit their power and autonomy (Bunker, 1983b). In this article, I examine how the Ugandan state has justified its continued intervention in the local economy and how power groups among the Bagisu have legitimated their claims against the state.